Windows Copilot's is showing third-party Ads to Windows users

Lee Duna@lemmy.nz to Technology@lemmy.world – 434 points –
ghacks.net
58

3rd party ads lead to the roulette wheel of malware injection. M$ can't even keep the malware links off of their garbage MSN homepage on Edge. This would be an extremely dumb move, and they will do it anyway because it trades off security for money.

To the surprise of absolutely nobody. There's no way it was going to be free and have no ads.

Edit: By the way, I don't see many people talking about it but DALL-E 3 was stealthily launched in the new Bing chat update and it's incredibly impressive. By far the best image generation AI in the market right now, and it probably won't be free for long.

Do you think that the next step is product placement?

"Draw a rabbit wearing a top hat."

Produces picture of rabbit, wearing a top hat, sipping a coke.

That would be hilariously evil, but I doubt they'd go that far. They'll likely just put an ad in-between every prompt if they decide to go full greed.

Why not both? Why would their greed have a limit like that?

I could see this being a very interesting watermark - the free demo is sponsored by Coke, and all images will prominently feature the product. Upgrade to a paid/business/Enterprise account to get images without the product.

Given how many God-awful advertising patents have already been filed, I really can't see anyone turning down this opportunity. The only reason against it would be a technological limitation- making sure the product isn't featured alongside negative/toxic content. For instance, Hitler yelling at a bunch of homeless orphans (while holding a Coke)

It won't be free for long. MS already announced that it will be moving to a paid service shortly.

The best, but still pretty bad at understanding some very basic ideas.

I jave had mixed results. I asked it to generate a user interface and it was absolute gibberish.

Geez, ads baked into an OS. What a time to be alive.

The ads have been baked in for a while. Every time I turn on my PC, the first thing I see is it trying to get me to buy Game Pass, and when Starfield came out, it was putting pictures from the game on that startup screen. Even after I tried to turn that off, it still showed them.

Yeah windows has been an ad delivery platform since windows 11 came out. It’s why it was a “free” upgrade for so many people

Did you mean to say Windows 10?

Ads have been served in Home edition since 10 was dropped with 1507. And they strip group policy from it to make it harder to change that. Windows Vista to Windows 8.1 were offered free upgrades to Windows 10, based on the version those keys belonged to.

I'm right now testing Windows 11 deployment for work and I hate it. I'll move to Linux before I move to Windows 11 on my personal devices.

I mean yeah, whenever the specific changes were put in place as you outlined. I don’t use windows enough to know the history, but I appreciate the clarification

No problem. I don't apply my experiences to others' lives, or at least I try not to. Thanks for taking along the lines I was trying to convey!

Right? You bought the OS but you still get ads. Even worse, it sends your data to MS servers

Sigh, one more thing for the list ...

"Didn't you have ads in the 21st century?"

"Well sure, but not in our dreams. Only on TV and radio. And in magazines. And movies. And at ball games and on buses and milk cartons and t-shirts and written on the sky. Oh, and in our operating systems. But not in dreams. No siree!"

Microsoft: the beatings will continue until morale improves

Microsoft: We now inject the malware attack vector directly into your OS because it makes us slightly more money.

Like it wouldn't.

Please, it's 2023. Corporarions have totally embraced the "you are the product" model. They offer you a service on their infrastructure ("the cloud") on their terms, which they can modify and terminate on will. Then they make money by selling your data, showing you ads and using your data to personalize those ads so that you are more likely to click on them.

Shame or ethics? Please, it's money that makes the world go round. Ads in every app! Ads on the web! Ads in every corner of the city! Ads on public transport! More ads! Even more ads! No square centimeter of physical and virtual space left unused!

It's really pathetic.

Microsoft will keep doing this shit until their monopoly is broken.

I don't know why people are continuously surprised at MS doing scummy things when they pretty much control the market, have little to no competition, and regulators have proven they don't care.

Truly amazing. Usually you roll out these features, get the userbase involved and intrigued at these new features, get used to them and THEN try and monetize it to capitalize on the sunk cost feeling

I was finally able to get rid of the ads in Windows. I'm sure that it doesn't block everything, but editing the 'hosts' file helps. At least I don't see any ads in Windows anymore. Here is an simple tutorial that I found on how to do so:

youtu.be/IJr2DcffquI

5 more...

I removed copilot the instant I saw it. I don't need any more Microsoft online shit built into my OS, thanks. (I also use Arch, but Windows kernel anti-cheat)

Come on over to Linux yall, the water's open-source vibes are fine

I keep telling myself im going to give linux a try at some point, and I should probably get familiar with it as soon as possible

Your instinct is right, because it does take a little bit of time to be familiar enough that it's automatic, but it doesn't need to be a big daunting thing - I first dabbled with Linux running in a virtual box. Then I dual booted for a while. Now I'm running just Linux. Dipping your toe in the water is good

Here's the knife they slip in with a new "free" feature in Windows...

At least with co-pilot for O365, they are charging (a lot of) money for the feature, presumably without ads.

I had a brief look at enabling this but I didn't see the point. Copilot in the office suite or outlook makes sense though.

Reasons I haven’t owned a windows device in over a decade. I’ll pay the premium for Mac to not have to deal with this bull shit. Also Mac has been killing it in the user privacy game.

It's like you actually went out of your way to post something more irrelevant and unhelpful than "jUsT UsE LiNuX"

“JuST uSe WinDow5!” Is probably the least helpful advice. Windows is garbage.

It's helpful to me if others use Windows. I haven't used it as my primary OS since Vista so my knowledge is out of date, they can go hassle someone else about their Windows issues

Too bad half the shit I do on my computer, Macs aren't even capable of.

lol. What? Unless your personal computer is actually a backend server for heavy infrastructure, then a Mac can probably do it.

Computers are just tools, and a personal computer running MacOS can do more or less the same as one running Windows. One tool might be better optimized than the other, like gaming on Windows, but that's about it.

Now, you might strongly prefer one, or not know how accomplish what you want on the other, but that doesn't mean it can't do it. It just means you don't know how.

MacOS would be a complete write-off except thankfully it has some POSIX compatibility and standard Unix tools work on it (with varying degrees of success, but much more success than trying to create Unix environments on Windows)

If it didn't have that then it'd be as useless as Windows

Also Mac has been killing it in the user privacy game.

Okay, I thought you were serious, but now you have to be joking